Month 1: Your Child’s Journey to Early Reading

I remember the days of beginning to teach Bella to read. Friends would ask me when I planned to start my early reading intervention. I would reply that I was starting now. They would say, but she is only one month old; what can you do at such as early age?

We started at one month and one of Bella’s favorite activities was looking at black-and-white picture books as I talked about the different objects on the pages.

I would prop her up on her Boppy pillow, show her each page, and talk about what I saw. “Look at the zebra!” or “There’s a bunny.” She seemed to enjoy this exchange and was eager to look at these books again and again.

The beauty of this experience was not only the bonding time together, but also the vocabulary and language skills that we were building by reading the same book over and over and talking about the pictures.

Babies visualize better in black-and-white and high-contrast until they reach about 3 months of age. The author of three black-and-white contrast books that we really love are by Tana Hoban.

This is an example of an activity that you can start with your infant as early as one month to build reading skills.

What are some of your favorite activities to engage your one-three month old?